


Marks of the Hunted

by phantisma



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-26
Updated: 2006-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-13 09:53:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantisma/pseuds/phantisma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean looks in the mirror later and thinks about what the bruises mean</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marks of the Hunted

Sam is sleeping, for a change, a light snore filling the room even as Dean slips out of bed and moves to the bathroom. He’s sore. It’s been a rough week and he’s not as young as he used to be.

He snorts at that, quietly, and pulls the bathroom door shut behind him. Let Sam sleep. He needs it. Not that Dean doesn’t. God knows he’s tired, exhausted really, but somehow sleep just doesn’t seem to be on the menu tonight.

Instead he slowly pulls off the wife beater and boxers that stick to his skin from the sweat and drops them to the floor before turning on the water in the shower. The face that looks back from the mirror echoes the earlier thought about getting older. There’s a bruise over his left cheek, a testament to the fact that he doesn’t move as quickly anymore…or that he needs more sleep, more regularly.

It isn’t his only bruise. In fact, you can catalogue his life over the last month by the bruises on his body. There’s the old and faded ones, more yellow than black and blue…on his thigh, where Sam had fallen on top of him during a fight with a black dog in Montana, his head making a six inch circle of purple and black…and the one on his shoulder, faded now to a sort of dusty gray, from the wall in the farm house in Nebraska.

Dean shakes his head and climbs into the shower, letting the heat penetrate, letting the water wash over skin still tender to the touch.

Not all his bruises came from ghosts and fights and walls. There were other bruises…the shape and size of Sam’s fingers, on the inside of his bicep. Three nights ago, the bar in Winslow…Dean had been flirting and Sam…Sam had smiled all pretty and spoke sweetly, all the while his fingers had dug into Dean’s arm, reminding him, claiming him. They hadn’t even made it back to the Impala. Sam had shoved him against a wall in the alley behind the bar and fucked him hard and rough, adding a thumb shaped bruise on his lower back.

Dean leans into the hot water, soaping up his hair with whatever motel shampoo is there in the shower. His hands swipe past his eyes and into his hair and his eyes catch on the bruises that circle his wrist. Once upon a time he’d been afraid of bindings…of being tied down, shackled, handcuffed…these had been formed by handcuffs…two nights before…when they’d stopped for the night in Taos.

> “You’re thinking too much.” Sam had whispered as they came into the hotel room. His hands running down Dean’s back.

> “I’m tired, Sam.”

> “You can sleep later. Take your clothes off.”

> “Sam.”

> Sam was behind him, his body pressing in close without actually touching. “Not playing Dean. You need to focus.”

> Dean sighed. He knew better than to argue with Sam when his tone took on that note. Sam did know what Dean needed…always knew, even when Dean himself wasn’t sure. He stripped and waited.

> “Close your eyes Dean.”

> “Sam, I—“

> “Don’t argue. Close your eyes.”

> He had too…closed his eyes and surrendered into the hands that slowly stripped him of his clothes….to the words whispered, wicked and wild into his ear…surrendered beneath him, letting go of the thoughts and the plans and the anger and the hurt as Sam handcuffed him and used a length of rope to secure him to a nail in the wall…Dean only had a few minutes to contemplate where the picture had gone and when before Sam’s hands were there, reminding him not to think…to just let go.

> The flogging left no bruises…just tender skin, welts that Sam kissed and licked until Dean was coming without Sam ever touching his cock.

 

There are bruises on his back, ones he can’t see…above his shoulder blades, from the shovel a well meaning farmer hit him with the night before. Muscles all knotted and achy, though it was better than if the shovel had connected with his head.

They’re a testament to the life he lives…marks of the hunt…marks of the hunted…He turns off the water and climbs out of the stall, wrapping a towel around him and wiping the mirror clean. There’s one last bruise…one that never fades…one that Sam sucked onto his collarbone a year or more ago…and sometimes it’s his mouth that refreshes it, and sometimes it’s his thumb…but not a night passes that Sam doesn’t touch it…even if all they do is sleep.

Dean reaches up and brushes his fingers over it, pressing into it lightly. It had a direct line to his cock, fire racing from the tender pain through to bring him hard and fast and full. Sometimes all it took was Sam looking at it, licking his lips…Dean pulls in a deep breath and lets his hand fall away. Sam is sleeping…and one of them should. They had a ghost to hunt two towns away…Dean smiles at himself in the mirror, knowing that the hunt will bring more bruises, more marks…and after, so will Sam. And Dean will treasure every one of them…they’re a testament to the life he lives…to the fact that he still lives…marks of the hunt…marks of the hunted.

Dean slips out of the bathroom and back into bed, letting Sam curl around him, his heat like a blanket against his skin. It’s safe and warm there, with his brother draped over and around him, and Dean closes his eyes…let’s sleep claim him in the early morning dark.


End file.
